New client: RESOLVE, solving stuck problems since 1977, asks Buena for one story
The nonprofit that helped create environmental conflict resolution runs more than 15 programs, from tigers to clinics. It asked us for a brand that ties them together.
Young Voices finds talented writers and commentators under 35, trains them, and gets their ideas into the world’s biggest newspapers and newsrooms. In November 2023 it hired Buena to rebrand the organization and rebuild its website. Four months later it had a new line, “Think free,” a surreal new look, and a site built around a searchable database of its talent. In 2025 that talent was seen 251.3 million times.
Young Voices in 2025
- 1,374published articles by its contributorsOp-eds and columns placed in outlets across North America and Europe during 2025.
- 904broadcast appearancesTV, radio and podcast interviews booked for Young Voices talent in 2025.
- 251.3Mcoverage viewsYoung Voices’ count of how many times its talent’s 2025 coverage was viewed.
- 800+program alumniPeople who have come through Young Voices programs, many now working in policy, media and academia.
A talent agency for ideas, not actors
Young Voices began in 2013 as a media project of Students For Liberty. In 2016 it was spun off as an independent nonprofit, led by Casey Given, who still runs it today.1 Its home base is Washington, DC.2
The model is simple and unusual. Young Voices works like a talent agency, but its clients are writers, analysts and commentators aged 18 to 35, and its product is ideas. Its staff of PR professionals coach them, pitch their work to editors and producers, and book them on air. Its media training and placement are free to the talent, and donors cover the costs.2
Beyond its contributors, it runs the Dissident Project, which trains immigrants who fled oppressive regimes to tell their stories on campuses and in the media, and the Liberty Comms Lab, which coaches think tanks on how to be heard.3
Its politics are classical liberal: free markets, individual liberty, constitutional government.3 What drew us in was the bigger idea under that. Young Voices goes looking for young thinkers who don’t fit neatly into left or right, and argues that a debate needs more than two sides to stay healthy.
Breaking the polarization loop
When we dug into the brief, we found the problem Young Voices is really working on. Outlets need big audiences. Audiences increasingly want media that tells them their side is right. And young journalists who want a job at a top outlet learn quickly to pick a side to get it. Round and round it goes, and every turn makes our thinking a little more uniform and a little more extreme.
Young Voices breaks that loop. It finds the people who think for themselves and puts them where everyone else can read them. So we gave the whole brand one instruction, short enough to fit on a T-shirt and big enough to fill a homepage: think free.
We framed the difference against the agencies everyone already knows.
Up and coming
Traditional agencies sign established names over 30. Young Voices finds talent under 35, often in a first job or just out of school.
Free to talent
Agencies take a cut of their clients’ pay. Here, donors cover sourcing, training and matching.
Freethinkers
Agencies sell whatever the market demands. Young Voices backs people who don’t fit a side.
Think free.
Surreal, on purpose
The brand guide we delivered on March 4, 2024 put the positioning in plain words: the nonprofit talent agency for rising freethinkers in public policy. Then it gave that idea a look.
Freethinking is hard to photograph, so we didn’t try. We built the imagery around surrealism instead: a writer typing on a laptop on top of a breaking wave, a man reading in a desert of glowing lightbulbs, a scholar at his desk in the clouds. Three photography styles, “deep thinking,” “nurturing” and surreal headshots, sit alongside authentic photos of the real staff and talent.
The typography pairs Editorial New, a sharp, ultralight serif with a newspaper’s confidence, with Satoshi for everything that needs to work hard. The palette runs from Deep Ocean to Electric Lime, with a warm Original Red and a coral gradient for accents.
A homepage that works like a talent database
The new site leads with its people. We rebuilt joinyv.org on Webflow around the audience that matters most: the editors and producers who book talent. At the center is the Talent Database, where you can search contributors and filter them by policy focus and region, the way you’d browse an agency’s roster.
Behind it, we moved years of content into a new CMS: talent profiles, news, and a database of articles and media hits, so every placement lives on the contributor who earned it. The imports ran from February through May 2024, when the full site came together.
The talent pages carry the same idea: “Search the top database of free thinkers.”
For a writer starting out, a profile there is a calling card. For an editor on deadline, it is a shortlist.
From hire to launch
November 6, 2023
Buena signs on
Young Voices hires Buena to rebrand the organization and rebuild joinyv.org.
February 2024
The content moves
Talent profiles, news and the media-hit database start moving into the new Webflow CMS.
March 4, 2024
Brand guide v1.0
“Think free.” arrives with its mission, voice, colors, type and surreal photography.
Spring 2024
The new joinyv.org
The rebuilt site comes together around the Talent Database, with the last imports in May.
Two years later, still thinking free
The brand has held. Visit joinyv.org today and you still land on “think free.” in giant lime letters, over a surreal scene of a young writer in the clouds. Below it, the numbers have grown: 51 current contributors, 1,374 articles and 904 broadcast appearances in 2025, and more than 800 alumni building careers in policy, media and academia.2
